Coll 6/67(4) 'Boundaries of South Eastern Arabia and Qatar.' [‎379v] (758/843)

showing the line now proposed and that, which the Saudi Government had asked
for on the 3rd April, so far as it could be drawn in from the indications in the
Saudi memorandum of that date in the absence of all the geographical information
necessary to identify certain of the places named therein. There was no time for
discussion, but Fuad Bev manifested disappointment at the exclusion of Sufuk
from Saudi territory. I told him that that place was much closer to the
Sabkhat-al-Matti than as shown in Hunter’s map and was marginal to the
Sabkhat.
5. After the formal G.C.B. audience, I remained with the King to talk
business. As he apparently wished the conversation to be private, I asked
Mr. Oppenheim and Mr. Ousman to withdraw. Fuad Bey remained in attendance.
So did Sheikh Yusuf Yasin and the King's four eldest sons, but they all sat
discreetly at the other end of the room. Captain de Gaury acted as interpreter.
6. I reminded the King of our conversations at Taif in July 1934. Since
then I said Fuad Bey had been twice in London, and there had been much
discussion of outstanding questions. 1 indicated to the King, as 1 had already
done to Fuad Bey, the three subjects which I particularly wished to pursue in
Riyadh. As regards the frontier question, I recalled the Saudi memorandum
of the 3rd April and the counter-offer which I had then made. Fuad Bey had
said during his subsequent visit to London that the Saudi claims rested on a
considered appreciation of tribal considerations, whereas the counter-offer rested
on nothing at all (Fuad Bey grinned). I could not accept this view of our
counter-offer, but I admitted that it was very limited. After Fuad Bey had left
London His Majesty's Government had studied very carefully the information
he had supplied and had collected information from other sources. All this
information led up to the new proposals which I had given to Fuad Bey just
before the audience. I wished to indicate the bases on which they rested. They
were twofold.
7. On the one hand, His Majesty’s Government were responsible for the
foreign affairs of Qatar and the Trucial Sheikhdoms. They had responsibilities
towards these States. They could not agree to deprive the Sheikh of Qatar ol
any portion of the main block of that peninsula by ceding the Jebel Nakhsh or
to isolate the sheikhdom by agreeing to a line drawn right across the base of the
peninsula. As regards the Khor-al-Odeid, they had consistently recognised that
it belonged to the Sheikh of Abu Dhabi. I would not take the King through
all the objections to the line his Government had proposed, but I would mention
two other points. His Majesty's Government were not in charge of the foreign
affairs of the Sultan of Muscat, but he was bound to them by many ties and they
must consider his interests very carefully. Their information regarding the
Hadhramaut tribes showed that their range extended a good deal further north
than the Saudi Government had supposed.
8. I had indicated, 1 said, the objections to the baudi proposals of last
April. I now turned to our second basis, which was more favourable to the
Saudi Government. We had gone deeply into the question of the distribution of
tribes. We did not think that an allocation of tribes as such could provide a
frontier, having regard to the other historical, political and geographical factors,
but we did think that great account should be taken of tribal considerations.
We had done this in preparing our new proposal, and especially as regards the
Murra. We had found that the dira of that tribe was, as Fuad Bey had told us,
much more extensive than we had supposed. 1 would give two instances in which
tj W e had modified our views. We were relinquishing Banaiyan, which we had
Mi at first honestly believed to lie in the domain of Abu Dhabi. In the south we
were willing to concede Shanna. Fuad Bey had given us a list of, I thought,
162 wells claimed for the Murra. We had not been able to identify them all, but
I believed that, when the King studied our proposal, he would find most of them
included in our offer. .
9. 1 intimated to the King that the further we had gone to meet his views
the more difficult it would be "to increase our offer in any way. I ended by
commending it earnestly to his acceptance, saying that it would be very
unfortunate if, through failure to reach a settlement now, we were thrown back
on irreconciliable positions, we on our original legal theory, he on his claims
of the 3rd April.
10 The King thanked me for my statement and expressed gratification at the
general nature of our new proposals.' He used language suggesting fairly clearly,